


With you by my side I can take on the World

by duesternis



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, Light Erotic Asphyxiation, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Praise Kink, Retirement, Tenderness, internalized feminization, john considers cockwarming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:21:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duesternis/pseuds/duesternis
Summary: “No. No, I say! I’m through with that. Let’s get out of town, John. Let’s damn well settle in the countryside.”John swallows another bout of tears and touches Edward’s heaving flank.Presses a bruising kiss to his cheek.“Like the Captains?”“Like the bloody Captains, aye.”
Relationships: Lt John Irving/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	With you by my side I can take on the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [landofhorses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofhorses/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for my amazing boyfriend.  
> Check out his stories, they are very, very good!!
> 
> Percy, I love you so much, here's too many more birthdays for us!

He rushes from the terrace, howling laughter at his heels, and his cravat turning into claws against his neck.  
Into a rope, into hands that choke him.

He cannot breathe.

Futile he pulls at the slippery silk, eyes hazy with tears now and there are heavy steps behind him on the flagstones.  
He’s being followed.  
God, he’s being followed!  
They’ll be done with him quick, he can barely stand.

“Irving,” a rough voice calls, thick with cigar smoke.  
The steps hurry behind him and he stumbles.  
“Irving!”  
He gasps, but the cravat has pulled so tight around his throat that he can’t get any air.

“John,” close by his shoulder now and a warm hand descends on his shoulder like Damocles’ sword.  
He is turned around like a puppet, limbs shaking and weak.  
“Let me help you,” the man says to John’s cravat and deftly unravels the tight knot.  
A warm, calloused thumb brushes John’s adam’s apple as the man pulls the cravat and collar loose around John’s throat.  
He can smell cigar smoke, a spicy scent beneath that.  
A very familiar scent.  
“Edward?”

“Aye. Are you hurt, John? Sick?”  
John inhales deeply, night air cooling the sweat in the hollow of his throat. He leans into Edward’s hand on his shoulder and scrabbles his fingers over Edward’s sleeve, until he finds hold at his elbow.  
His legs can barely hold him up.  
“Needed some fresh air.”  
“Christ, you fled the place, as if a horde of huns were after you. Worried me.”  
Edward’s warm thumb rubs the side of John’s neck, over his jumping pulse.  
It grounds John in the moment.  
Better than prayer ever could and he swallows the guilt clawing at the back of his throat with difficulty.

“I apologize. It was not my intention to distress you, Edward. We can go back, if you’d like.”  
Edward chuckles, scuffs the heel of his fine boots on the street, as if he’s crushing a bug under it. He looks over his shoulder to the brightly lit terrace and the noise spilling out of the french doors.  
John admires his regal profile in the light and swallows another kind of guilt.  
“No. Let’s walk.”

He offers John his arm and John, knees still shaking from the imagined danger of a man laughing with a tilt of his sharp chin, takes it.  
And if he leans a bit more on Edward than normally, then neither of them comment on it.

They walk through the park, along the little duck pond. The birds are nestled by a bush on the shore, little heads tucked under their wings.  
One quacks softly as they pass and Edward quietly shushes it, smiling.  
“You and your animals.”  
“What can I say? Country lad through and through.”  
John smiles and squeezes Edward’s arm.

They come out of the park on their street and Edward unhooks his key from his golden watch-chain.  
John slips his arm out of Edward’s and lets him unlock the door, quietly following him up the stairs to their rooms.  
The fire in their cozy sitting room is burning low, despite the heat of the day still hanging suspended.

“Oh, Mrs Kilridge,” says Edward softly and sheds his jacket.  
He opens the windows in shirtsleeves and the nightly breeze makes the sleeves flutter against his strong arms.  
John fists his hands uselessly in the hem of his waistcoat.

Edward asks “Nightcap, John?” from the bureau where they keep their drinks and John tears his jacket from his body as if it were burning him.  
It feels like it is.  
“Yes.”  
It comes out choked and raw and he tugs the loose cravat off his neck. Drops it atop his jacket on the floor and all but collapses on the settee.

“Steady, there.”  
Edward kneels by his side and presses a glass of brandy into John’s sweating palm.  
“Are you sure you are alright, John? You look awfully pale again.”  
John swallows the finger of brandy with a grimace and drops the empty glass on the cushions next to him.  
“Edward,” he says and drops his face into his palms.  
Sobs.

“Hey. Hey, hey, hey.”  
There’s a pause, then the clinking of glasses and then Edward’s warm hands are on John’s wrists and he pries John’s hands away from his face.  
“What’s all this then, huh? Talk to me, my friend.”  
John sniffs, swallows another sob and feels his face crumple like a badly built card house. He drops his head to Edward’s shoulder.  
Edward still smells of cigar smoke, sweat and a rest of his cologne.  
John inhales deeply, the exhale shaky and wet. It’s embarrassing, but crying on Edward’s shoulder is a comfort.

The added warm touch of Edward’s hands on his back makes John cry even harder.  
Edward keeps humming softly, rocking John subtly from side to side.  
It reminds him of sailing, scaring and soothing in equal measure.

“I’m a failure,” he croaks in a short break when he comes up gasping for breath, nose dripping, eyes still wet.  
Edward pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and dries John’s cheeks.  
Wipes his nose and John blushes, shame hot in his chest.  
“You’re not, John. You really are not.”  
“I am. How you can bear to spend longer than an hour in my miserable company truly astounds me!”  
John stands, pushes past Edward on shaking knees and falls against the mantlepiece, forehead pressed to the cool stone.  
The breeze wafts in from the open windows and John shivers. Not for cold, mind.  
Britain knows no true cold.  
John does.

“I can barely hold a polite conversation without feeling like someone wearing an elaborate human costume! I’m no gentleman, I’m just someone pretending at something, Edward! I’m a monster! Since I came back from that- That wretched place!”  
“Good Christ, John.”  
Edward stands by the settee, hands empty and imploring, stretched half way over the rug. His eyes are very warm and very hurt.  
John cannot stand to look at them, so he looks down instead.

“I ruined tonight for everyone there.” John swipes an aggressive gesture through the air, papers rustling by the window.  
A carriage clatters by and Edward shuffles a short step towards the fireplace.  
“John, you didn’t.”  
“I did. At least for you.”

“I had no want or need to stay any longer. It was mere politeness that kept me and sometimes I cannot say why I bother. No one extends courtesy to us, why should we to them? They pester us with their questions and we are expected to answer them with a smile and a story that will not embarrass the Admiralty or, I don’t know, the-the Crown?!”  
Edward snorts and comes up at John’s side.  
“No. No, I say! I’m through with that. Let’s get out of town, John. Let’s damn well settle in the countryside.”

John swallows another bout of tears and touches Edward’s heaving flank.  
Presses a bruising kiss to his cheek.

“Like the Captains?”  
“Like the bloody Captains, aye.”

John is unsure if he will ever grow used to waking again to birdsong outside his window.  
He stretches under the covers, presses his cheek into the feather pillow and looks at the blue sky.  
Edward can’t understand how he can stand having the curtains open while he sleeps, but John thinks he has spent enough time in the dark.

Outside, in the pasture, he can hear Edward with his horse and John gets up.  
Opens the window and watches Edward in his riding breeches, shirt billowing in the summer morning, no waistcoat in sight anywhere.  
Not even a cravat.  
“Well, well, will you look at that.”  
He gets dressed with the window open, Edward’s warm voice carried up by the wind.

Downstairs John finds the maid has left breakfast out before going and there’s a pot simmering on the stove. Some kind of stew for dinner.  
He eats standing up and then idles down the path to the pasture.  
The brown shaggy dog Edward keeps for no particular reason lifts her head from her big paws when John passes her and her tongue lolls pink out of her mouth.  
Her sharp teeth make John shiver, but he loves her silky ears.  
Crouching he touches one of them and says soft nonsense to her for a moment.  
Then he resumes his ambling walk down to Edward. The dog follows him after a yawn and stretch.

“Good morning,” he says and leans against the fence.  
Edward turns from stroking his horse’s nose with the back of his palm to smile a dazzling smile at John.  
He hasn’t shaved this morning and his hair is overlong again.  
John looks at his hands, curled tightly around the top rung of the fence.

“Good morning, John. Had breakfast?”  
“I did. Emma left some out. Did she go down to the village?”  
“Her brother is sick, so I told her to stay with him. We’d make do without her.”  
The horse noses at Edward’s shoulder and Edward absentmindedly scratches its big head.  
John feels he must flee.  
“Of course. I’ll be inside, if you need me. I have some correspondence to attend to.”

“John,” says Edward softly and John looks at him, eyes wide and lips parted around a silent “yes?”  
Edward leans in, suddenly very close, and kisses it right off his lips.

He smells like horse and sweat and his soap and John moans into his hot, open mouth, hands in Edward’s messy curls.  
Edward puts a foot up on the lowest rung of the fence and stands on it, towering over John.  
John readily tilts his head back, letting Edward lick into his mouth.  
It’s wet and filthy and it makes him hard.

With a pleased grunt Edward breaks the kiss, licking at John’s slick lips.  
“Let me put Doll here away and I’ll join you inside, yes?”  
John nods dumbly, lips tingling, Edward’s voice even rougher than normal, his breath hot on John’s face.  
“Good.”

Edward kisses him again, short and bruising, and leaps off the fence to gather his horse into the stable.  
John all but runs back up the path, the dog following him with a wagging tail.  
She curls up by the stove in the kitchen and John tosses a log on the fire, stirring the pot once.

Then he takes the stairs up two at a time and can’t decide between his or Edward’s room.  
He paces on the carpet, hardwood floor creaking underfoot.  
The house is quiet around him and John is painfully aware of his cock pressed tightly against him, hard as iron.  
Mindlessly John stops his pacing by the commode under the landscape Edward proudly hung up in their first week here.  
He rubs his hard cock along the corner of it, the wood digging into his flesh and John pants wetly.  
His weight is on his hands, his knees shaking as he ruts his testes on the corner of the commode.

Edward’s heels clack sharply on the floor. He’s in his riding boots.  
John grunts sharply and ruts against the commode again.  
He hears Edward make a halting step, breath sucked in through his teeth.  
“Look at you.”  
He shudders, shame pulling his skin tight, but he can’t stop. It’s like he is possessed.

“Look at you,” Edward repeats and walks down the hallway to stand just behind John.  
His heavy breath ghosts over the sweaty back of John’s neck.

“John,” Edward breathes and John knows exactly how his lip lifts over his teeth, how he opens his mouth, lower lip hanging just the slightest bit.  
John knows how it is to slide his tongue into Edward’s mouth when it takes that shape and become utterly his.

Edward’s heavy hands, moist and warm – he must have washed them in the kitchen – land heavy on John’s hips and Edward presses up against his back.  
It pushes the edge of the commode sharply into John’s crotch and he opens his mouth to shout, but no sound comes out.  
John can feel the outline of Edward’s hardness against his backside.  
It makes him shudder, the heat of it searing.  
He closes his eyes and lets his head drop forward.  
Edward kisses the back of his neck, licks at the sweat there, hips circling tightly against John.

“Look at you, most beautiful thing I ever saw. So pretty, John.”  
John shudders again, ruts against the commode, presses back against Edward.  
With slow, sure movements Edward pulls John’s shirt free of his trousers, rests his flat palm over John’s stomach and gently pushes along with every breath.  
“Edward,” John whispers and grabs Edward’s wrist with shaking fingers.  
“Let’s take this to bed, my sweet.”

Edward kisses John behind his ear, nuzzles his hair, and then steps back.  
He opens the door to his own room and steps inside, leaving John to follow.  
He does so gladly, closing the door behind himself quietly. Like a schoolboy he leans against it, waiting for the headmaster to call him forward.  
His mouth waters and his cock twitches inside his trousers at the thought.  
It makes him feel filthy.

“Can you help me with the boots?”  
Regally Edward stands by the window, one hand on the sill, shirt open over his handsome chest, riding breeches stretched tight over his arousal.  
His cock.  
John swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth and walks forward.  
Every step reminds him of his own state and he feels paraded and cherished at the same time.  
Watched, even though it is only Edward who sees him.

“Grab the heel tightly, John. And over the foot, yes, like that.”  
John kneels on the rug, looks up at Edward as if he were the saint on a church’s window, haloed by the sun at his back.  
Edward pulls his foot out of the boot with a grunt and sigh, John almost topples with the sudden pull and the even more sudden lack of it.  
A knee in his shoulder keeps him upright and Edward strokes his hair. Smiles at him.  
“The next one too.”  
The same thing happens.

Edward sets his socked foot down between John’s open thighs, the warmth of his body thrilling.  
John inches towards it, kisses Edward’s strong thigh.  
Sighs when Edward cradles his head and strokes his thumb over John’s cheekbone.  
“Thank you, John,” he says earnestly. He does everything earnestly, his Edward.

He pulls him up and into a kiss that leaves John moaning.  
Leaves his hands uselessly shaking, fisted in the soft front of Edward’s shirt.  
He almost sits on the thigh Edward has wedged between his legs.

“You’re so good to me.”  
John shivers, a tear shaking loose from his eyelashes.  
I tinges the next kiss salty and Edward grunts, hips jerking against John.  
“My handsome man, my darling. Takes such good care of me.”  
“Edward,” John whispers against the sweaty hollow of Edward’s throat and is rewarded with a harsh thrust of Edward’s hips against him.  
It makes his whole being quake.

“You should see yourself, see how gorgeous you are, when you shake like this.”  
John gasps and cries out softly.  
Edward hefts him up with a grunt.  
He smells of sweat and horse still and John inhales his scent like a man starved and parched of it.  
He is, God, he is starved of it and parched by its absence.

“Edward,” he all but mewls, gently nestled into the pillows of Edward’s bed, like he imagines a bride must feel on her wedding night: Cherished beyond compare, precious like nothing else in the world.

Edward looks at him like he means it, when he leans over John and says “John, my beloved.”  
With his steady hands he undoes the laces of John’s shirt, pulls it off his chest. Hums at the lack of an undershirt and spreads his palm over John’s heaving, flushed chest.  
“So strong. I was scared you’d never come into your skin again, after the expedition, but look at you now. What a man, I say. What a man.”  
Edward bends down and kisses the dark hair on John’s chest, hands carding through the sweaty curls under John’s arms.

John arches under his mouth, keens, his hands buried in Edward’s pillows, surrounded by his scent.  
His cock is so hard now that it hurts.  
“Christ, John, I wish I could do nothing all day but lay in bed and look at you. I could never tire of your handsome face, your beautiful body.”  
The relief of Edward opening the placket of John’s trousers is so palpable that he sobs, hips lifting off the bed.  
Edward makes a hungry noise and laps at the wet patch at the front of John’s linens. His mouth is unbearably hot, his tongue almost dripping.  
It’s too much, it’s barely enough.  
John cries out, pulls his knees up to his chest, pushes at Edward. Anything to stop that horrible teasing, scalding tongue.

“Please!”  
“Anything, John, anything for you.”  
A seam rips as Edward hurriedly shucks his shirt off, peels his breeches off his thighs. He wears no underwear, his cock standing proud and purpling in its thicket of hair.  
John’s throat goes dry around a swallow, his mouth watering.  
By God, he wants.  
Craves.

“Come here,” growls Edward, pulls John’s trousers and pants off, drops his shoes and socks over the edge of the bed.  
Leaves John naked as the day he was born, naked as Adam.  
Or maybe he is Eve, made solely for Edward, made for his pleasure and company.  
He surely feels incapable of being on his own.

John touches Edward’s ribs, feeling for an empty space, the missing rib that made him possible.  
But Edward is perfect, is complete. John knows him no other way.

“Husband,” John whispers and shudders under Edward’s touch.  
Edward strokes the hair on John’s thighs, down to his knees, kisses both of them and then gently ushers them apart.  
John sighs and stretches, arches on the bed.  
“My love, my darling, my John.”

Edward kisses his skin, strokes it with care. His thumbs press left and right of John’s cock, but never touch it.  
He knows the denial now will make the actual touching later all the sweeter, but it feels awfully like betrayal.  
“Edward, please,” he begs, “Please, in God’s name, touch me?”

“Nothing I do to you, I do in God’s name.”  
There is a glare, a fire, in Edward’s dark eyes, zeal in the sharp twist of his lip.  
How John loves him.  
“All I do is in your name, John, and in your name only. You are the only one who can lay claim to what I say and do.”

John gasps, stares at Edward. His earnest, heartfelt man, not a dishonest bone in his body.  
He has never known anything Edward says and does to be willfully without truth.  
So he must mean this.  
“Oh,” John says softly and rears up to kiss Edward.

Buries his hands in the soft hair, locks his legs around Edward’s middle.  
He feels his cock dribble down its own length, his whole body aching with the need of taking Edward into himself.  
To cradle him, shelter him.  
He presses his forehead to Edward’s, pants.  
Edward does the same, smiling a sharp smile, teeth pressing against his lip.  
John licks them. The sharp edges of Edward’s teeth. The wet palate behind them.  
Edward hums, makes it a proper kiss again.

“Bugger me,” John says into Edward’s mouth and prays that Edward doesn’t ask him to repeat himself.  
“John,” Edward grunts, fingers digging bruises into John’s hips.  
Sweat slicks the course of John’s palms down Edward’s spine.  
Edward shakes like a race horse.  
“Yes.”

With the utmost care Edward resettles John on his front, a pillow under his chest, another elevating his hips.  
He kisses from the first knob of John’s spine down to the dip of it just over his arse.  
Then he slicks the cleft with oil.  
Whispers something into the skin stretched over John’s shoulderblade, kissing it. John closes his eyes and tries to pray, but the words won’t come to him.  
All that comes to him is Edward’s name.

He groans, Edward’s fingers gently rubbing the oil into his skin, the tender, hot furl of his arse.  
The first digit slides in as John inhales and it makes the breath stick in his throat.

“John, look at you,” Edward grumbles, dragging his free hand down John’s side to cup his hip. “So gorgeous for me.”  
John sobs and spreads his legs more.  
“The things you do for me, John, good Christ. I don’t deserve you.”  
Edward slides his finger in to the second knuckle, his palm cradling John. He suckles at John’s back, up to his neck, kisses his jaw and chin, his lips.  
His cock presses hot and hard against John’s hip and he shivers for want of it.

“Edward,” he breathes against his mouth, the tongue mapping his teeth for the thousandth time.  
John has never been much of a cartographer, but he could draw a map of Edward Little in his sleep.  
He thinks Edward could do the same of him.

“Edward, please, I beg of you.”  
Edward hums, rubs his bristly mutton chops, his stubble, against John’s shoulder blade and pulls his finger out, only to slide two back in.  
“Let me first tell you, John, love of mine, how much,” he kisses John’s shoulder, the freckles there, “How much I love you.”  
John bites back a curse and hides his face in Edward’s pillow.

Edward settles between his spread thighs and kneads the flesh of his arse with his free hand, the two fingers deep inside of John moving ever so gently and slowly.  
It’s maddening.  
John tells Edward as much, muffled by the pillow, but Edward hears him and laughs.

“I love that about you too, you must know. Your impatience. When you make people hurry up with just a half lift of your brow, down in the village. And then that little huff you do.”  
Edward catches John’s twitching wrist and kisses it.  
“These also. Your hands.”

John makes a wretched noise in the back of his throat and Edward spreads the fingers deep inside him.  
It makes him shout.  
“Your damn hands, John Irving. They were, actually, the first thing I noticed about you.”

Edward pulls his fingers out of John, let’s go of his hand and there’s the clinking of the oil bottle against the ring Edward wears on his small finger.  
Then the blunt pressure of his hot cock against John.

“Bloody dainty things, set against the dark wool of your uniform? I wanted to kiss them, lift them like you were a proper Lady and kiss them as a hello. Instead we had to shake and God, John.”  
With a grunt Edward pushes in, steadying himself with a hand on John’s hip.  
He settles with just the head of his cock inside and John bites the pillow.  
“I shook your hand and I never felt more like a brute in all my life.”

Gently Edward strokes John’s shaking back and kisses his shoulder. It drives him deeper into John’s body and John calls Edward’s name, his favourite prayer.  
“I must confess, up North I felt compelled to protect you, on account of that damned handshake alone, for the longest time. I thought privately that no man in the Discovery Service should have such slight hands. Such slim wrists, made for the twirl of a pen and the safety of a parlour, not the severity of a ship.”

John bears back against Edward’s thrusts the best he can, knees shaking and legs weak.  
He couldn’t stand now, not if he wanted to.  
With a sob he begs.  
“Please, Edward, no more!”

Edward rumbles against the back of John’s neck and slides a hand under John’s chest, putting his palm over John’s racing heart.  
“I barely started, my dear, and you love it so well, when I talk to you.”  
John sobs and nods, helpless.  
“I do, I do, Edward, I do.”  
“Good boy,” Edward whispers into his ear and John shudders, pleasure so thick he can taste its iron sting at the back of his throat.

With a snap of his hips, his thighs flexing left and right of John’s hips, Edward seats himself fully, comes into the cradle John makes of his body for him.  
He sighs, how John hears him sigh after a busy day, when he finally sits by the fire and rests his feet.  
It is the highest praise, that John’s body makes him feel the same way.  
Safe and comfortable and content

“John,” Edward says warmly and John cants his hips, buries his face in the pillow and lets Edward make use of him.  
“You take me so well, John, take all of me. So eager for me, aren’t you? So good and sweet.”  
John preens at the praise, the kisses Edward peppers on his shoulders.  
His breath washes over the shell of John’s ear, his hips rolling ceaselessly, like the ocean against the shore.

Edward grunts, shifts his hand from John’s chest upwards, swipes sweat from his collarbones and then carefully cradles John’s throat in his big palm.  
It makes John flinch the slightest bit.  
“Relax, John. I will not let any harm come to you.”  
John swallows against Edward’s palm, closes his eyes and nods.

His cock hurts, pressed against the pillow under his hips, leaking and jumping, whenever Edward talks to him with his dark, calm voice.  
Although there are cracks in the veneer of calm, now.  
John can imagine how Edward’s face looks.  
Brow creased, shadowing his eyes, the spark in them, the dark lust. His lip will be lifted over his teeth, tongue sometimes darting out to lick his lips.  
Edward’s hair drips sweat on John’s back.

His hand closes a bit, palm pressing against John’s throat. Against his adam’s apple.  
He breathes without restriction, but every swallow reminds him of the pressure, of Edward holding him.  
A particularly vicious thrust of Edward’s hips spears him completely, pushes him up into Edward’s hand and John moans.  
Edward grunts, pleased, and does it again.

“My gorgeous boy,” he groans into John’s ear and curls his free hand around John’s hipbone. Lifts his hips off the pillow and John doesn’t even try to get his hands underneath his weight.  
He lets it all rest in Edward’s hands and breathes into the pillow.  
It’s labour now, to breathe, and he treasures every heaving breath.  
His knees shake, but Edward holds him, thrusts into him.

“You’re getting tighter for me there, John. Are you feeling good?”  
John tries to nod, tries to lift his head from the bed and tell Edward that yes, he feels good. Spectacular, even.  
All he can manage is to turn his cheek and moan weakly, Edward’s thumb pressing into his pulse.  
“Oh, look at you.”  
His eyes won’t open, his whole body is heavy, his thoughts sluggish and tinted crimson with pleasure.  
“I’ll have you in front of the mirror next, John, so you can see just how gorgeous you are for me.”

Edward’s voice is almost broken now, cracked through the middle and oozing dark and thick with lust. Sinful like richest chocolate.  
John smiles.  
“Damn you, John, the things you do to me.”  
He whines and Edward kisses his neck, bites at it, shifts his hand to get at his pulse point and John draws a deep, ragged, free breath.  
It’s a rush.  
Like standing up after four glasses of wine and feeling the room shift under your feet.  
John cries out, voice raw, and soils the pillow beyond repair.

Edward curses, becoming of a boy raised on tales of the Navy and come into himself aboard a ship.  
John smiles still and breathes again.  
Shivers and shudders and groans, as Edward pulls out and forces him quickly on his back.  
Then there are legs left and right of his face and Edward’s cock pressed against his lips.

He opens dutifully and swallows it down, until it hits the back of his throat.  
Edward shifts John's head with a practised grip and his cock slides into John’s throat.  
They both moan.

John can taste oil and the earthy taste he knows as himself by now. It’s filthy.  
Edward looks enraptured.

He uses John’s throat for two, three thrusts, then swiftly pulls out again and takes his own hand to his cock.  
John licks his lips slowly and breathes.  
“I love you, John. You alone. You’re all I ever could wish for.”  
He closes his eyes and Edward grunts, the head of his cock wetly slapping against John’s cheek.  
“All I ever did wish for.”

Then thick spurts of Edward’s hot seed splatter John’s face.  
Across his nose and brow, dripping from his lips, sliding down his cheek in fat globs.  
He blinks slowly, his pulse beating loud in his ears, throat sore as he swallows the seed on his tongue.

Edward all but sits on John’s chest, breathing heavily, one hand cradling the side of John’s head.  
The other still holds his softening cock and John idly thinks of swallowing it down again, of keeping Edward warm and comfortable in his mouth, his throat.  
He licks his lips and Edward makes a noise, as if someone had punched him in the chest.  
John manages to look at him, eyelashes heavy with sweat and seed both.

“Edward?”  
“Gorgeous.”  
Edward rolls off of John and kisses him.  
Pulls a handkerchief out of thin air and gently wipes John’s face free of tears he hadn’t noticed spilling, of sweat and seed.  
Kisses him again, his brow, his nose, his cheeks and lips.

“I love you.”  
“And I you.”  
They turn on their sides, look at each other and John stretches his legs. Feels sore and content and utterly tired.  
“I think I shall sleep some more.”  
Edward smiles and kisses his temple.

“Let me wash you first, John, and the sheets need changing.”  
“If you must. But take me to my room then, I shall not tolerate standing around while you wrestle the sheets.”  
Edward laughs and kisses his scrunched up nose, his wrinkled brow.  
“Yes sir,” he says and fetches the bowl of water from his dresser.

It feels luxurious to be bathed with a soft cloth, layed up in bed like a king, tended to by the man that John would die for.  
Would kill for.

“Did you mean what you said?”  
“Yes.” Edward drags the cloth gently between John’s legs, and a second time. “What exactly do you mean, however?”  
John smiles and closes his eyes. His limbs are heavy, his throat sore and there will be bruises by tonight.  
“The mirror.”  
Edward chuckles, a bit surprised, but his hands never falter.  
“Yes,” he says and lifts John up like a bride.

John tucks his arms around Edward’s sweaty neck, licks into his mouth and lets himself be carried over the threshold of his room.  
The window is still cracked, making the room smell fresh and sweet.  
It goes well with the heady scent of Edward after sex.  
“I wish I could bottle your scent. Use it as cologne, sometimes.”

Edward hums into John’s hair and settles him in his pillows.  
Washes swiftly at John’s wash stand and then joins him under the sheets.

“George once told me, that in ancient Rome they used to sell the sweat of accomplished athletes to their supporters. To use as cologne.”  
John grins and curls into Edward’s embrace.  
“It would be very cultural of me, then, to keep a bottle of your sweat.”  
Edward laughs, his chest rumbling against John’s, his eyes crinkled delightfully. He is so very handsome, his gentleman.  
“Very much so, yes. I’ll see if I can’t get a small bottle for such a purpose in town, next time I go.”  
“Or you might write one of your sisters about it,” says John around a yawn and settles more firmly against Edward. “I bet they have bottles cluttering their vanities.”  
Downstairs the dog barks once, and then quiets again.  
“I could,” says Edward and closes his arms around John. “I would, for you, John. Anything for you.”

John smiles, tears pressing against his closed eyelids and slips into a dreamless sleep.  
The last thing he feels are Edward’s lips against his temple.

He wakes as he fell asleep: Loved and held, feeling Edward’s lips on him.

**Author's Note:**

> if you read this far and liked it even a little bit, please consider leaving a comment!! thank you


End file.
